Films from Xavier Legrand and Kitty Green are among the new titles in the competition line-up of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (SSIFF, September 22-30).
French director Legrand, whose 2017 feature Custody won best film at the Cesars and best director in Venice, brings The Successor, about a designer who discovers a shocking secret after his father dies.
Australian director Green follows up her fiction feature debut hit The Assistant (2019) with The Royal Hotel, about two backpackers who start working at a pub in the remote Australian outback. Julia Garner once again stars in the film, alongside Jessica Henwick.
Christos Nikou lines up an A-list cast featuring Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and Jeremy Allen White for Fingernails, a science fiction romance about a new technology that can test a couple’s romantic love. Luke Wilson and Annie Murphy also star. The Greek director won acclaim in 2020 for Apples which screened at Telluride, Toronto and Venice.
Swedish director Isabella Eklöf competes for the Golden Shell with Kalak. Her second feature, Sundance premeire Holiday (2018) and a Cannes Un Certain Regard best screenplay for Borders (2018), follows a Danish nurse who moves to Greenland.
Thomas Lilti’s A Real Job will also premiere in Official Selection as a special screening. The film explores everyday life in a French school and stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Vincent Lacoste.
Also screening is A Journey In Spring from Taiwanese directors Tzu-Hui Peng and Ping-Wen Wang, about a widowed man who keeps his wife’s corpse in a freezer to cope with her death; and Kei Chika-Ura’s Great Absence, about an actor who reconnects with his father.
The six new titles join the 11 previously announced, which include Robin Campillo’s Red Island and Isabel Coixet’s Un Amor.
San Sebastian 2023 Competition titles
A Journey In Spring (Tai)
Dirs. Tzu-Hui Peng, Ping-Wen Wang
Fingernails (US)
Dir. Christos Nikou
Great Absence (Jap)
Dir. Kei Chika-Ura
Kalak (Den)
Dir. Isabella Eklöf
The Successor (Fr)
Dir. Xavier Legrand
The Royal Hotel (Australia)
Dir. Kitty Green
A Real Job (Fr) - special screening (out of competition)
Dir. Thomas Lilti
Previously announced
All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt (US)
Dir. Raven Jackson
Ex-husbands (US)
Dir. Noah Pritzker
The Practice (Arg-Chile-Port)
Dir. Martín Rejtman
Red Island (Fr-Bel)
Dir. Robin Campillo
MMXX (Rom)
Dir. Cristi Puiu
Puan (Arg-It-Ger-Fr-Bra)
Dir. María Alché, Benjamín Naishtat
A Silence (Bel-Fr-Lux)
Dir. Joachim Lafosse
Sultana’s Dream (Sp-Ger)
Dir. Isabel Herguera
The Rye Horn (Sp-Por-Ger)
Dir. Jaione Camborda
Un Amor (Sp)
Dir. Isabel Coixet
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